Police sergeant Neil Howie is called to an island village in search of a missing girl whom the locals claim never existed. Stranger still, however, are the rituals that take place there.

Rome, AD 303. Emperor Diocletian demotes his favourite, Sebastian, from captain of the palace guard to the rank of common soldier and banishes him to a remote coastal outpost where his fellow soldiers, weakened by their desires, turn to homosexual activities to satisfy their needs. Sebastian becomes the target of lust for the officer Severus, but repeatedly rejects the man's advances. Castigated for his Christian faith, he is tortured, humiliated and ultimately killed.

Almost a decade since larger-than-life glam-rock enigma Brian Slade disappeared from public eye, an investigative journalist is on assignment to uncover the truth behind his former idol.

The ghost of the King of Denmark tells his son Hamlet to avenge his murder by killing the new king, Hamlet's uncle. Hamlet feigns madness, contemplates life and death, and seeks revenge. His uncle, fearing for his life, also devises plots to kill Hamlet. An historic BBC production taped on location in and around Kronborg castle in Elsinore (Denmark), in which the play is set.

Queen Elizabeth I visits late 1970s England to find a depressing landscape where life has changed since her time.

The untimely death of silent screen star Rudolph Valentino prompts the many women in his past to reminisce about his troubled rise to superstardom.

In the Paris of the 1910s, brash young sculptor Henri Gaudier begins a creative partnership with an older writer, Sophie Brzeska. Though the couple is 20 years apart in age, Gaudier finds that his untamed work is complemented by the older woman's cultural refinement. He then moves to London with Brzeska, where he falls in with a group of avant-garde artists. There, Gaudier encounters yet another artistic muse in passionate suffragette Gosh Boyle.